Running 3 monitors from different cards

[Job]

I currently have a 7800gt and am running 2 monitors from it - however, I'll be upgrading to a new GPU soon and was wondering if I could keep the old one in order to run 3 monitors simultaneously - is this possible?

 

[Peter]

Generally, yes. The cards and their drivers must be multi-VGA capable, and drivers for the different cards must coexist with each other nicely.

For the former to be untrue, you'd have to go way back in history ... but the latter is easier. So as long as you stick to cards that run off the same set of drivers, it should work just fine.

 

[Job]

cool - i should be going to an 8xxx Nvidia card - I'm assuming I wont need to do too much configuring and the monitors should all just come on naturally - I'll be wanting one large desktop - eg, an extension of dual-view into three screens

 

[Peter]

Your system BIOS might have a preference control. This lets you pick which one of your cards will become the primary (boot) display. If no such control is there, that'll be a surprise

In Windows, you'll have to position and enable all extra monitors around this primary screen.